A rediscovery of Aurangzeb/Alamgir through a remarkable new book

Aurangzeb ’Alamgir and the Mughal Empire: A History Retold

by Munis D Faruqui

Published by Juggernaut

416 pages ₹999

  His grandfather and his father are both known by the titles they took once they became the Badshah — Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Hardly anyone knows them by their names, Salim and Khurram. But Aurangzeb is known and vilified by his name. He is never referred to as Alamgir, the title he took when he became the Mughal Emperor in 1658. His greatest biographer, Jadunath Sarkar, used Aurangzeb and this usage has become the convention. Munis D Faruqui introduces and uses the distinction: His protagonist is Aurangzeb pre-1658 and then Alamgir. This is consistent with Mughal practice.

 

Faruqui’s book is incomparable. It is unlike any book that has been written on Mughal political history or on any Mughal emperor. In this sense, the subtitle of the book is a tad understated. This is not a mere retelling. It is a rediscovery; not a reassessment but a fresh look. It is also not an attempt to defend Aurangzeb-Alamgir who is situated in his own time and context. The latter changed through the long life of the prince turned Badshah (born 1618, died 1707; regnal years 1658 to his death). The book presents an analytical narrative revealing often little-known facets of Mughal modes of ruling and Alamgir’s transformative impact on them.

 

Underpinning the analytical narrative is a detailed reading of known sources and texts and the mining of an archive that has hardly been tapped. The latter consists of the Akhbarat-i Darbar-i Mualla  (News Bulletins of the Exalted Court) and another collection of documents whose name translates as Documents from the Mughal Era. It is the retrieval of empirical material from this archive that forms the backbone of this book and brings to it a density of detail, and reveals the many layers of the Mughal political edifice. The details in this book — one manifestation of which is the mind-boggling proliferation of proper names and Mughal administrative terms and positions — give to the narrative an extraordinary richness. To give one example, albeit a trivial one, of the level of detail Faruqui unearths: It is well known that Aurangzeb-Alamgir as a pious follower of Islam abstained from taking alcohol, but how many know of his addiction to coffee!

 

Faruqui breaks new terrain in his description of how as a prince Aurangzeb positioned himself to succeed his father; in his deep analysis of the role of the harem — i.e. some important women — in shaping Mughal and Alamgir’s imperial destiny; and the crucial position eunuchs occupied in Alamgir’s ruling apparatus. Faruqui uses the label eunuchate for the last feature. It is worth briefly looking at Faruqui’s treatment of these three themes.

 

When Aurangzeb was hardly eight years old, he and his eldest brother, Dara Shukoh, were sent by their father as hostages to Jahangir’s court — the price of Khurram’s rebellion against his father, the then emperor. This was Aurangzeb’s lesson by fire that succession to the Mughal throne was a contested and a bloody affair. Aurangzeb learned that if he wanted to be the Badshah, he would have to earn the crown against difficult odds. The dice was loaded against him because Dara Shukoh was his father’s favourite son and very obviously the heir apparent.

 

Aurangzeb was sent away from Shahjahanabad on hazardous military and administrative assignments, which included two stints as governor in the Deccan. It was in the Deccan that Aurangzeb earned his spurs as an able military leader and administrator. He came to be known for his work ethic, his personal moral code and also for building a network of loyal supporters among men and women. He did all this in spite of the consistent hostility of his father who viewed him with suspicion as the only threat to Dara Shukoh’s succession. Dara Shukoh, contrary to the idea that he was above political machinations, egged on Shah Jahan’s suspicions about Aurangzeb’s ambitions. In the inevitable war of succession when Shah Jahan was ill, it was Aurangzeb’s reputation, his support base and his military and tactical skills that made possible the transition from Aurangzeb to Alamgir. Dara Shukoh, his other qualities notwithstanding, was politically and militarily no match for his brother.

 

Once he ascended the throne, Alamgir faced two daunting tasks. One, because he had deposed and incarcerated his father, he had to establish his own power and legitimacy. Two, he had to bring back order and efficiency to the empire that was not in a good shape owing to the war of succession and the incompetence of Shah Jahan’s later years. One of the instruments that Alamgir used to establish himself and gain legitimacy was the royal harem. In the Mughal scheme of things, the royal harem was relatively a late arrival. Neither Babur nor Humayun, perhaps because they were camp emperors without a settled court and capital/palace, had segregated quarters for the women of the royal families.

 

The harem as an institution emerged in Akbar’s reign. Here Faruqui makes the interesting point that since Akbar married many Rajput princesses, there was a pressure, following prevailing Rajput conventions, to keep these wives in separate and protected quarters to which selected males had privileged entry. But members of the harem were never passive and anonymous individuals. Some of them were powerful and influential presences, and thus they register their presences in the archives — counselling the emperor, matchmaking, organising marriages and celebrations, and even having a decisive say in how many children wives of emperors could have. Alamgir, first through his eldest sister, Jahanara (who helped to reunify the family), and then through his daughter, Zinat al-Nisa, got control over the harem and used it to underpin his power and position. I am sure the role of the royal harem in Alamgir’s reign will be the subject of debate and more research though Faruqui makes a very persuasive case about the harem’s criticality.

 

Similarly, Faruqui emphasises the importance of the eunuchate (I am not too happy with this neologism). The royal harem and the eunuchate had obvious interlinkages since the eunuchs were considered to be sexually safe. Alamgir had his own group of trusted eunuchs (some of them more trusted than high-ranking noblemen) who were channels of information between the harem and the Badshah. Faruqui provides short sketches of some of the powerful eunuchs, thus making them visible for the first time. The eunuchs formed an inner circle of protection for Alamgir. This was especially important during his last years when he was frail, often disoriented and haunted by his own failure. The eunuchate was one of the major pillars of support for Alamgir.

 

Aurangzeb-Alamgir was a pious and devout Muslim. Islam represented for him an ethical and moral order by which he attempted to live his life. During his lifetime, Faruqui notes, he came to be revered as a zinda pir (living saint) and was memorialised as one after his death. However, and Faruqui emphasises this, as a ruler he was a pragmatist and adaptable, and trying all the time to strengthen and perpetuate the empire that he and his forefathers had built. He seldom, if ever, allowed his policies to be determined by his religious beliefs. In the early 1700s, he reprimanded a Sunni nobleman, who recommended that some people should be removed from imperial service for holding “heretical’’ views, by writing across the proposal, “What connection have earthly affairs with religion? And what right have administrative works to meddle with bigotry? For you is your religion, for me is mine.’’

 

Alamgir had a sense of imperial destiny, which, late in his life, he realised he had failed to fulfil. He saw himself as a failure and a sinner in the eyes of God. He was a tragic figure. Faruqui’s description of Alamgir’s last days is poignant, transcending the clinical precision of his handling of empirical evidence.

 

This review has been appreciative, if not laudatory. But I cannot help mentioning a few issues that I think Faruqui has not dealt with or has deliberately underplayed. Over Alamgir’s reign fell the shadow of a deepening agrarian crisis. (It is significant that Irfan Habib’s magnum opus, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, is not mentioned in the bibliography even though it gets passing mentions in a couple of footnotes.) Production was falling; prices were rising because of the influx of bullion from the New World via Europe and burgeoning trade; there was a shortage of  jagirs (Alamgir famously remarked, ek anar, sau bimar), and even a greater shortage of paying  jagirs. These were some of the compelling factors that made Alamgir move to the Deccan in 1679 in search of more revenue and more jagir  land. This move started a doomed vicious circle because to reward loyalists and win allies, Alamgir had to increase the number of mansabdars and pay them in cash/jagirs. This put the word “failure” indelibly on Alamgir’s fate. I mention this because there is a pronounced tendency to write Mughal political history ignoring the overarching economic reality. It is a pity that a historian as intelligent and erudite as Faruqui should follow this fashion of underestimating substantive research in Mughal economic history. 

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The reviewer is chancellor and professor of History, Ashoka University. The views are personal